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i have the v2 version of the AWUS050NH with rt2800usb and i have some problems:
- i can't change the tx power to values >7dBm
- i can't connect to any networks but i can inject without problems

I use a Debian kernel 2.6.30-2-686, i tested many compat-wireless (compat-wireless-aircrack-alfa036h-050nh, compat-wireless-2.6.30, compat-wireless-2.6, compat-wireless-2009-10-23, compat-wireless-2009-10-24), iw 0.9.17.
rt2870sta doesn't work at all, i can't even inject packets
rt2800usb can only inject with a transmit power of 7dB

UPDATE (15/Jul/09) - Ref. ALFA-AWUS050NH -
- It was released Kernel 2.6.30, and at the moment there are some problems in recent Compact-Wireless. (only for Internet connections).
- The injection work fine BUT is difficult browsing in Internet, for this purpose loaded the driver rt2870sta.

Hey fnord0, something has come up and I'm not sure if it has been brought to your attention.

Downloading the latest Compat Wireless (released 12-11-09) on BT4 a pre-release ISO(I used the official Offensive Security guide to make a persistent USB stick) gives us hard errors on the "make" part of the compile once again:

Actually, there were quite a few more errors, but this is just to show you that a similar issue is arising from the one you had back in July. However, the compat-wireless-2.6.30.tar.bz2 tarball compiles and installs normally without an errors, but there are *NO* rt2800usb modules installed with this package for some reason:

ya, good call... you will see that the devs break compat-wireless every so often, it is not considered fully stable yet (iirc). so best bet is to find one that indeed DOES compile with no errors, and stick with that revision as your "proper" rev, and whenever you wanna check out some new code, just download it and try it out. I know I've ran into multiple compat-wireless "breaks" since I last posted the note above about the "fix" from johill. anyways, best of luck!

Actually, I did find a work around using both fnord0's guide and Jano's guide on the aircrack-ng forums. The biggest difference is downloading and installing Jano's suggested compat wireless package that he suggested in his thread, but blacklisting the drivers needs to be done a *tad* bit differently.

However, I tried posting the modified tutorial and due to a 15 post requirement to post links (wget's), I cannot post this semi-pseudo modified guide that I just wrote. fnord0, is there anyway I can send this to you so we can at least get it up for others? Can't PM either, just tried.

By the way, thanks a lot for your tutorial, fnord0. Between both your guide and Jano's, the information was handed to me on a silver platter!

Next, I installed the rt2870sta firmware directly from RealTek's website (The link is posted by fnord0 on the first page of this thread and is titled "Ralink corp. | Linux"). You will get some weird errors unzipping this file as mentioned by fnord0, but it does seem to be working perfectly fine:

This next part requires a little bit of knowledge from the user(s) and understanding which wireless drivers they actually have loaded. Generally, if you think you don't have any wireless drivers loaded and running and "rmmod mac80211" returns an error and lists dependencies, those are probably the drivers that are currently loaded and you will probably want to blacklist and unload those drivers temporarily for the compat wireless install. After I did this, I installed the compat wireless package suggested by Jano:

After the compat wireless package finished compiling and installing I loaded up the new rt2800usb driver:

Code:

modprobe rt2800usb

And voila, I had a working rt2800usb driver that works completely with aircrack-ng, kismet, and all the other devices I use for my wireless penetration tests. Again, "works completely" as far as I have tested and can tell. The only thing that is semi-annoying is that the rt2800usb driver does *NOT* work for actually connecting to an AP directly for an internet connection. For that, you have to unload the rt2800usb driver and load the rt2870sta driver that is pre-installed with BT4.

Also, if you want to change the MAC address while using the rt2870sta driver, you cannot use macchanger. I have been looking for a solution everywhere to get macchanger working with this driver, but have come up empty handed. However, you can edit /etc/modeprobe.d/options and change the MAC address by using a new "option":

great job, Dexxra - I looked over your entire post, it looks awsome! when I get some free time I am gonna have to give this version of compat-wireless that is hosted @ aircrack-ng.org a try. thanks for your work & post! also :: I love the part in yr post about HOWTO change the MAC while using rt2870sta drivers, I never knew about the "MAC" option while calling the rt2870sta module. very cool - I'll let ya know how things turn out from this end. peace